Understanding inner worlds
If it stinks, it’s worth something
My favourite fruit in the world is this.
Yes, that stinky, spiky thing that isn’t allowed on the subway in Singapore: the durian.
But, this has become the agricultural “Apple stock” of the 2020s. The value of a durian has increased almost tenfold in ten years; the Malays even have an idiom for a financial windfall, ‘durian runtuh’, which means durians falling from a tree to the ground.
But why? Short answer: China.
Longer answer: Chinese consumption of durians has grown from half a billion dollars in 2017 to over five billion dollars today. This means that Malaysia and Thailand, major exporters, are growing in both scale (one province in Thailand has 600 durian packing businesses) and innovation (one Malaysian business, Hernan, freezes vast quantities of durian pulp for export).
Thai durian farmers are now dollar millionaires, buying (Chinese) cars with cash, and sending their kids to university. I’ve noticed just since last year that even my local supermarket sells fresh durian, but it’s expensive (about $50 for a single fruit), and I can only see this price climbing as global demand grows.
Question: What niche product or service can you find a much larger market for?
Connecting to what’s important
Typical of many boys in the 1970s, I was obsessed by Matchbox Cars.
These were devised even earlier, back in 1947, by English die-casters Leslie Smith and Rodney Smith (hence the 'Lesney’ company), with their partner Jack Odell. It was Odell’s inspiration to create the Matchbox car after he learned of the rule at his daughter’s school that students could only bring toys that fit inside a matchbox.
Look at the expressions on the two Smiths’ faces: they’re middle aged men looking almost like small boys themselves. Why? Because they connected with the value proposition of the Matchbox car, which were important for many children of my generation:
We could buy them ourselves without adult supervision: they were cheap enough to purchase using scrounged small change, or pocket money, and our local newsagent, or toy store, would sell them.
We could fancy ourselves as ‘collectors’: by the time I had 20 cars, I saw myself as a connoisseur. I spent hours arranging and rearranging them, and even more hours envisaging my next ‘acquisitions’.
They opened up gateways to our fantasy worlds: I created entire ‘cities’ in my imagination just from my 20 cars, and my modest collection of Lego bricks, laid out on my bedroom floor.
Question: How can your products or services embed themselves into a customer’s self-constructed inner world?
Controlling perceptions
The 80th anniversary of the allied landings at Normandy on D-Day was just this month, and it offers us a masterclass in strategic deception and the critical importance of information superiority.
Key to this success was manipulating German assumptions. Look at this aerial photo. What do you see?
These are floating docks, capable of landing thousands of ships.
The Germans assumed that the allies would land at an established port (either Cherbourg or Le Havre, both of which the Germans had fortified). Instead, the allies brought their own ports with them.
The Germans were blindsided, and the Luftwaffe took two weeks to muster up enough planes to bombard the invaders.
The invasion force included 7,000 ships and landing craft manned by 200,000 naval personnel from eight allied countries. Within weeks, over 850,000 men, 150,000 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of supplies had landed on the Normandy shores, and started the march that would lead to the fall of Berlin less than a year later.
In warfare and business alike, mastering information flow, and understanding others’ assumptions, can create decisive advantages.
Question: What advantages can you realise by challenging the assumptions of your competitors?
Before you go, please click the ‘like’ - I really do enjoy knowing you’re reading, and enjoying the strategic provocations. As you go through your week, do notice assumptions that enable, or disenable, people achieving their strategic objectives.
Next week, I’ll be writing from beautiful Geneva, where I’ll do my best to make some observations with strategic significance to share with you.
Have a great week,
Andrew